Rockbox Developer Conference - Euro Edition! 2011
Date and Location
When: June 3rd-5th 2011
Where:
Google London
Who
These people are going to show up. Please add your route/airport and expected time of arrival.
- Developers / Staff
- Non-Staff / Users
- CharlotteLye (Might be arriving Thursday 08:35 @ LHR - flying standby, so this can change; leaving Wednesday)
Agenda
Since we can code and IRC at home, too, we should focus on helpful group activities.
Friday:
- Conference room should be available from 16:00
Saturday:
Sunday:
- code, chat and meetings
- departure of international participants
- cleanup the place
Ideas for discussion:
Infrastructure
Bring your own laptop and DAP devices of choice. Google likely has enough power outlets for wall-wart chargers (we have requested additional power adapters and some international converters be provided, tbc, bring your own if you can - UK does not use "standard" european plugs). Unrestricted wifi access is available and ethernet access has been requested as well (tbc). The room has two large independent projectors with a variety of video inputs. A USB hub might be helpful. A webcam for friends who can't attend physically would be great (see below).
Feel free to add extra things onto this list if you feel it is necessary (such as unported targets/etc)
- (Android) HTC Desire Z - DaveHooper
- (Android) Nexus 1 - BryanChilds
- (Maemo) Nokia N900 - JensArnold, PeterDHoye
- Archos Player - JensArnold
- Archos Recorder v1 - JensArnold
- Archos Recorder v2 - AustinAppel (x3)
- Archos Recorder FM -
- Archos Ondio FM - JensArnold, MarianneArnold
- Archos Ondio SP - JensArnold
- Gigabeat F - BryanChilds, AustinAppel, AlexParker
- Gigabeat X -
- Gigabeat S - BryanChilds, AlexParker, TorneWuff
- Gigabeat V -
- iAudio M3 - JensArnold
- iAudio M5 - MarianneArnold
- iAudio X5 - JensArnold
- iPod 1st gen - JensArnold
- iPod 2nd Gen - JensArnold
- iPod 3rd gen -
- iPod 4th gen Grayscale -
- iPod Color/Photo - JensArnold
- iPod Mini 1st gen - MarcinBukat
- iPod Mini 2nd gen - JensArnold
- iPod Nano - AustinAppel
- iPod Nano 2nd gen - MarcinBukat
- iPod Video (5th gen) - DaveHooper
- iPod Video (5.5th gen) - BryanChilds, TorneWuff
- iriver H1x0 - BryanChilds, AustinAppel, AlexParker, DaveHooper, PeterDHoye
- iriver H3x0 - AustinAppel, PeterDHoye
- iriver H10 5/6GB - PeterDHoye, JensArnold
- iriver H10 20GB -
- MPIO HD200 - MarcinBukat
- MPIO HD300 - MarcinBukat
- Olympus M:Robe 100 - AmauryPouly
- Olympus M:Robe 500 - AmauryPouly
- Samsung YH-925GS -
- Samsung YP-S3 -
- Sansa c200 - BryanChilds, AustinAppel, AlexParker, MarianneArnold
- Sansa c200v2 -
- Sansa Clip - BryanChilds, AustinAppel
- Sansa Clipv2 - TorneWuff
- Sansa Clip+ - AmauryPouly, JensArnold
- Sansa e200 - AustinAppel, AlexParker, AmauryPouly
- Sansa e200v2 -
- Sansa Fuze - AlexParker
- Sansa Fuze+ - AmauryPouly
- Sansa Fuzev2 -
- Sansa m200 - AustinAppel
- Sansa m200v4 -
- Tatung Elio - JensArnold
- Zen Vision:M -
- Meizu M6 -
- Meizu M3 - AlexParker
- Cowon D2 - AmauryPouly
- Onda VX747 -
- Logik DAX - AlexParker
- GoGear HDD6330 -
- GoGear SA9200 -
- Archos AV340 - AustinAppel
- Samsung YH-J70 -
- Webcam -
- Mio C510 - AmauryPouly
- Basic Tools, paperclips, soldering stations,...
- Pettersson D100 bat detector - ???
- Espresso machine - ???
How to get there
- From Heathrow airport, there are two ways into London: the Heathrow Express and the underground (Picadilly line). The Heathrow Express is pretty expensive and takes just as long to get to where we are, so it's advised you take the tube, which will take about 45 minutes. You need to take the Picadilly line towards central london (eastbound) and then change at Earl's Court for the eastbound District line to get to Victoria tube station. See www.tfl.gov.uk for London Transport info and route planning; make sure to go into advanced options and disable rail travel if you want to avoid the costly express.
- From Gatwick you can get a train to Victoria; there are regular trains and the Gatwick Express (which is expensive).
- From Stansted it's pretty inconvenient, as Stansted is not really in London at all - no matter what airlines claim.
- From the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, you can just take the Victoria line to Victoria (10 minutes).
- Google is extremely close to Victoria station (3 minute walk), someone can meet you if you are unsure which way to go but the general directions are: come out of the main entrance of Victoria station; you'll find yourself at a bus terminal. Go left and you should find Buckingham Palace Road immediately past the station: cross over to the far side and walk down until you see Belgrave House, Google is inside.
Travel tickets
- You may want to have an Oyster card, London's prepaid travel smartcard. They cost £3 to activate (this is refundable if you give the card back, along with any unused credit) and the Oyster prices for travel are significantly cheaper than buying paper tickets. If you're only going to/from the airport/eurostar it may not be worth it, but if you/we end up going anywhere else then it will probably pay for itself. Fare info is here: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx - Victoria and the Eurostar terminal are both in Zone 1 (as well as basically all of central london) but Heathrow is in Zone 6. There's a daily fare cap that works automatically. It covers all forms of transport within london (tube, buses, suburban rail).
- Oyster cards can be ordered in advance online here: http://visitorshop.tfl.gov.uk/ but you will have to pay for delivery as well as the activation fee. You can get them at stations, either from the manned ticket counter or in some stations from a small vending machine that dispenses them for £3 (you then need to go to a ticket machine to add prepaid credit). You can also buy paper tickets there but I don't recommend it, if you aren't going to use an oyster card then just use the ticket machine at the station.
- The last tube services from Heathrow to Victoria are at around 23:30. If you're arriving later than that you may have to take ridiculous bus routes. Avoid if possible.
How to get there by car
- Don't. There is nowhere to park at Google, parking at the hotel is likely to be limited-to-nonexistant and driving into central london at all incurs a daily congestion charge.
Currency
Pound Sterling. If you need a currency converter, there's one
here.
Language
Local language is English (unless you venture into the East End).
Hotels and Room Sharing
We failed finding a hotel to fit everybody. These people booked at
picadilly backpackers - an affordable hostel.
(Note: there still seems to be room left)
These people figured out something else.
Beer
Food
- The Google cafes are not open at the weekend so we will need to make our own arrangements; any kind of food you can think of is readily available somewhere in central london.
Statistics
Post-DevCon
Summary
Rockbox
DevCon Blog 2011
June 3rd, 2011
Rockbox's
DevCon this year has been kindly hosted by Google at their
London Headquarters on Buckingham Palace Road, just around the corner
from Victoria station. This year there was a long list of topics for discussion put together before the conference even started.
The "delegates" arrived in dribs and drabs from all corners of the
earth, but by about 8pm on Friday evening, everyone was there, and the
festivities started.
"Unofficial Rockbox" was a talk given by Daniel revealing some of the
inside secrets of Rockbox - including leaks from music player manufacturers
over the years, and anonymous hackers that we've interacted with too.
Saturday morning started with an extended piece of multi person
engineering attempting to stick a web cam to the wall which could
broadcast the proceedings to those not lucky enough to be able to
attend.
This was followed by a discussion about :
- Getting Android into the build system
This is more than technically feasible, with a few small hurdles.
I believe Zagor / Bagder have ideas on how to implement this, but no futher details were discussed at the
DevCon.
Android will be promoted to "Unstable". A lot of people are against
a real release until we've overhauled the UI sufficiently that we're
using native Android UI elements, since otherwise Rockbox will not
get favourable reviews from people downloading it simply from the
Android market.
Yes we need this. No volunteers yet though.
- Build process for the manual
Implement a fancy new regex to detect when thereÂs been a manual build error and flag this on the site somewhere.
GPLv3 is OK for nonessential parts, Âor later strongly preferred
ÂGPLv2 or later is required for code that is not surrounded by nonessential HAVE_* #ifdefs .We need to check which v2-only bits have to be fixed.
- SVN keywords / properties
Keywords are apparrenty universally reviled these days, and so will be removed.
Properties : Remove them (EOL is all we use) and put a server side hook in to only allow unix style.
This is largely irrelevant now however, since the decision to move to git - see below.
Ownership of ideas / mentoring is hard work, and weÂre lacking volunteers with the time to do it.
We shouldnÂt apply in future unless we have:
1) Clear ideas
2) Committers who have time / motivation to act as mentors
Our future is Android to a large extent. We want a new java-based UI. We need to separate the code into modules. We want a Ânative database on Android, not necessarily re-using the android media db.Start a second Android app with a native java UI.
JdGordon was humorously volunteered for doing the UI / Application separation.
- Committing controversial features.
Voting system.
On the development mailing-list: Three developers (expressed) in favour (+1), and none being against (-1) given enough time to react (7*24 hours!). If any problems occur, the RSB decides.
Fly-spray leaves a lot to be desired in terms of handling patches. Therefore it will be retired from this function, and left as a bug tracker only.
Torne to set up a test gerrit system which also doubles as a nice front end for git. If it doesnÂt work out we probably take the mailing list route?
- Split the manual up into smaller versions?
No-one thought this was a good idea, so we're not doing it.
We need to setup a first simple questionnaire for users of what works.
We need an automated testing system that tests functions.
We had a vote on whether or not to stick with subversion, or move to some form of DVCS. The DVCS option one the vote in the room with a very clear majority. There was then a subsequent vote on which DVCS we should use - the shortlist coming down to either git or bzr. Git won that vote too.
- Testing in the build system:
Test compiling alone isnÂt very useful
Distributing the result as test builds is desirable
Torne to look at sorting out a .deb package which will install into the Âlatest ubuntu from a PPA.
No need to maintain our
own VMWare image any more.
It is fine.
LetÂs not. For now. At least.
- Implement a Rockbox Achievements system : - Patience - Played more than 50 turns in Frotz - Patience of the gods : Completed a game in Frotz - Pointless - High score in 1d rockblox - Ear Worm - listened to the same tune 50 times in a row without pausing - Tin Ears - that tune is the test track. - [Saint]Âs biggest fan - Changed your theme 10 times in 10 minutes - True Fan - Recorded a live show - The Rockbox Team hate you - YouÂve fired up RockDoom - The Rockbox Team REALLY hate you - YouÂve fired up RockBoy - Liar - You really did download the pacman rom straight off the mainboard. Honest. - Square Eyes - Used MpegPlugin to watch something other than the ElephantÂs Dream - Colour Blind - Used MpegPlugin to watch something on the Clip. - Eye Candy - You use PictureFlow to start a track - Achluophobic - YouÂve used the Lamp plugin a lot. - Kasparov - YouÂve beaten chessbox - Slightly OCD - Quit Doom on the clip without resetting. - Screwdriver - YouÂve CF modded your player. - Soldering Iron - YouÂve RTC modded your iRiver H1xx - Fancy pants - YouÂve used HID - Read the Manual - Left party mode successfully.
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